LaC.CostSet — Personal Inventory as Code for Obsidian

English | 中文

Manage your belongings as structured TOML-in-Markdown inside Obsidian. Track price, purchase/end dates, tags, and optional recycle value. Explore daily cost trends, filter by tags, search, sort, and add/edit items with a clean UI.

What this plugin does

• Open a dedicated view for an inventory entry file and render your items as cards with totals and a cost trend chart.
• Generate a sample entry + sample items on first run if the configured entry file does not exist.
• Read/write items as TOML (with comments preserved). Wikilinks like [[ItemName]] are supported inside Markdown; the plugin quotes them only temporarily for parsing.
• Filter, search, sort: filter by tags, search by name/tags, sort by daily cost / price / purchase date.
• Add/edit/delete items in place. Long-press a card to temporarily toggle hidden (not persisted).
• Local-first: All data stays inside your vault.

How to open the view

• Command palette: run "Open LaC.CostSet" (command id: open-lac-costset). The plugin will use the configured entry file (see Settings) and create a sample if missing.
• File context menu: right-click a Markdown file and choose "Open with LaC.CostSet" to use that file as the entry (enable this in Settings).

The view type is lac-costset-view. Obsidian will restore this view as part of your saved layout. The plugin does not auto-open the view if it wasn't in the layout.

Entry file format (required)

The entry file is a Markdown file whose content must satisfy a minimal TOML header plus a body of wikilinks to item files.

Minimal example:

# Top TOML must include
type = "root"
renders = ["costset"]

# Body: list asset filenames using wikilinks (no extension)

[[Keyboard]]
[[Headphones]]

Notes:

• The file extension can be .md.
• Lines starting with # are comments and will be preserved.
• Wikilinks in the body can be unquoted; the plugin quotes them only for TOML parsing internally.

Item note format (TOML)

Each item note is a Markdown file whose TOML keys live at the top level (no extra namespace). The whole note is treated as a costset item. On save the plugin rewrites only the related keys and preserves leading comments.

name = "Thinkbook14p2025"

[style]
icon = "💻"

[detail]
price = 7999
active_from = "2023-01-01"
active_to = ""
recycle_price = 1200
tags = ["computer", "work"]

Daily cost is computed from (price - recycle_price) / daysUsed where daysUsed goes from active_from to the selected date (or active_to if it ended earlier). The trend chart treats recycle_price as 0 until the end date is reached.

UI overview

• Top summary: total daily cost, total price, total recyclable value; tag chips to filter; date picker; cost trend chart with progressive refinement.
• Action bar: search box, sort button (daily cost / price / purchase date), add button.
• Item cards: name, dates, tags, daily cost, price, recycle price; click to edit; long-press to toggle hidden (in-memory); right-click to delete.

Settings

• Entry file: path to the inventory entry Markdown file. Default: LaC/CostSet/costset.md.
• Enable context menu: show "Open with LaC.CostSet" in Markdown file context menu.
• Default sort: none (text order) | daily cost | price | purchase date.
• Default icon: one Emoji for new items. Only the first Emoji is kept when pasting text.
• Language: Auto / 中文 / English.

Installation

Method 1: BRAT

1. Install the BRAT plugin from Community plugins.
2. Open BRAT settings.
3. Click “Add Beta plugin” and enter the repository: alvinfunborn/lac-costset.
4. Enable LaC.CostSet in Community plugins; BRAT will pull the packaged release automatically.

Method 2: Manual installation

1. Download the latest release archive from GitHub Releases.
2. Extract it, create .obsidian/plugins/lac-costset in your vault if it does not exist, and copy the release contents into that folder.
3. Enable LaC.CostSet in Settings → Community plugins.

Notes & limitations

• "Hidden" is a temporary per-view toggle for quick comparisons; it is not persisted to files.
• The plugin rewrites only fields related to costset (name, style.icon, detail.*) and keeps your leading comments.

Tech

• Obsidian Plugin API
• Lightweight TOML reader/writer with comment preservation and wikilink support
• Responsive UI; mobile friendly; local-first

License

MIT License

Privacy and network use

This plugin works offline and does not use network services.